Girl Gone Greek (4 page)

I glanced over to see him slink away from the door. I realised that these kids, even the formidable Konstantinos, were afraid of my boss. I wondered if the other teachers were also overawed by her, contributing to their silence and that lack of eye-contact when I met them.

“Ready for the next lot?” asked Mrs Stella. She jerked her head in the vague direction of a dozen nine-year-olds who were lining up outside the classroom. They trooped in, giggling and whispering to each other as they eyed me.

“I’ll do a little introduction, as their English knowledge is a little less advanced than the other class.”

While my boss (who managed to look stern, even when not telling someone off) was introducing me, I looked at the little faces in the room: they seemed much more open and inquisitive than those of the teenage class.

The rest of the day ran quite smoothly, and later on I sat in a pool of fading sunlight in the tiny courtyard at the back of my flat. The courtyard had an orange and lemon tree growing in it, and picking an orange from the tree, I peeled it and sunk my teeth into what I anticipated would be a sweet orange. My gag reflexes went into hyperdrive as I spat the bitter fruit out. What I had absent-mindedly ingested was not an orange, but a
neranzi
—bitter orange used to make jams and desserts, but never eaten raw.
Oh well, isn’t this what living in a foreign culture’s all about—experiencing weird and wonderful things?
I thought, although my mouth wasn’t quite agreeing with this internal dialogue.

The “little ones,” as I thought of them, had a surprisingly good command of English for their age. Most had been attending pre-school since the age of four. My lesson with this age group also helped me to understand the silence of at least one of the other teachers: Helena only taught this age group and I concluded that after a few hours of teaching the younger children, she was more exhausted than indifferent.

The children had been attentive, listening to me tell them where I was from and what I’d done before becoming a teacher. When it was their turn to ask me things, they fired questions at me in “Gringlish,” a marked contrast to the teens. And at least they weren’t chewing gum. The funniest question was from a young girl named Bettina:

“
Kyria
Rachel, has your family died?” she enquired in her pidgin English.

“Excuse me?” After some coaxing from the others it became clear that Bettina, like most of the others, was wondering if one of my family members had passed away because I was wearing so much black. This explained all their tiny whisperings when I’d entered the classroom. It was then I learned about the Greek tradition of wearing black during times of mourning.

When a member of a woman’s family dies, she wears black for a period of time. In traditional Greek families, when a woman’s husband dies, the widow wears black for the rest of her life. This practice contrasted strongly with that of the men, who wear only a black armband for a short period after the death of a wife. It also explained the typical picture postcard scenes of old Greek women dressed in black.

I didn’t have the heart to tell the children that no, the only reason I was wearing black was because I felt it made me look slimmer…it suddenly seemed so shallow and materialistic. So I uttered the first thought that came to mind:

“Yes, my older sister,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back.

“Never mind,” Bettina piped up, “you are still beautiful, Miss.” I smiled at her implication. At least I was more attractive in this girl’s eyes than a dead person.

Glancing at the bedside clock, I groaned. It was only half past eight, and there was no need to leave for school until two. I forced myself out of bed anyway, determined to have a nose around my new neighbourhood.

After a long shower in my tiled bathroom that resembled something out of the 1970s (a disco ball wouldn’t have fitted into my luggage along with the teabags, otherwise the party would’ve been complete), I pulled on casual clothes and set off down the hill. It wasn’t lost on me how blue the skies were, and the mountain in the distance teased me with its snow-peaked presence.

My first human encounter in the village was with an old man, sitting outside his shop halfway down the hill—my street—that sold heating oil. An open fronted affair, the shop resembled a car mechanic’s workshop, but with bottled oil instead. The man was sitting on a wicker chair outside the shuttered entrance. Spotting me, he rose, waved me over and proceeded to rub my cheeks and try to embrace me, all the while chattering away in Greek.

“I can’t understand a word you’re saying,” I kept repeating as I backed away from his open arms, but it was no good: he carried on talking in rapid Greek. I soon managed to decipher a few words—
“Kyria Stella”
and
“Scholeio Anglia.”

He must know I’m staying in my boss’s house and that I’m the new English teacher.
I smiled a lot and promised that yes, one day I would join him for a glass of tea and honey…that’s what he’d been drinking and had kept trying to push into my hands. After about five minutes of this confusing but not unpleasant toing and froing, I continued on down the hill, eager to see all that the village had to offer. At least he hadn’t spat at me.

My next encounter was not so smooth; a Greek woman in her mid-20s was crossing the street at the bottom of the hill, looking in the opposite direction. My first meeting with Kaliopi was to almost bowl her over as the momentum of my descent wouldn’t let me stop, but it was a meeting that was to launch a lasting friendship.

“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” I stammered whilst checking to see if the woman was all right. I wasn’t sure if she understood me, although it was clear I was genuinely sorry by the fact I was trying to brush her down. Tall, thin with large brown eyes and short black hair, she looked me up and down. After an awkward pause she burst out laughing and hugged me hard…
these Greeks appear to enjoy embracing.

“Hi, I’m Kaliopi,” she said in perfect English. Taking my hand, this exuberant Greek pulled me along, “Come with me, you look like you need a cup of strong Greek coffee.”

“How do you know I’m English?” I asked.

“Please. Have you looked in the mirror? Have you compared yourself with people around here? You at least look like you have…
some
style…” she paused. “I am not stupid, you know.” She tossed her head and gave a snort, turning her attention back to the task in hand: taking me for coffee.

I got the impression she didn’t rate the local population very highly, and I guessed that like Mrs Stella, Kaliopi wasn’t a lady you said “no” to. Deciding to fall in line with this new turn of events, I followed her down the narrow, cobbled street.

Passing the butcher’s—huge carcasses of pigs hanging in the window with their heads still on—and baker’s shop—delicious smells of bread wafting out to greet us, along with the whistling baker, I almost expected to find a candlestick maker’s as well. It felt very quaint.

We passed several small haberdasheries with old women dressed in black crouched low behind the counter, but no supermarkets that sold everything under one roof. It was part of this small town’s appeal—the giants of capitalism hadn’t appeared to impose their presence and wipe out local trade. And there were no Golden Arches to spoil the view either. Instead there were small cafés selling their own chicken and pork dishes as well as home-made burgers. And apart from the narrow high street for cars, the side streets were all cobbled. It literally felt as if I’d stepped into a Dickens novel.

“Don’t worry,” Kaliopi glanced at my face, “There’s a Lidl at the edge of town. I go there sometimes to shop, so we can go together from now on.”
Ah, so not entirely free of the supermarket giants, then.
Apparently it was easy to make a new friend here, not forgetting the old man and his oil shop. I almost expected to find the Greek equivalent of five “Bridesmaids” by the time the day was through.

At the end of the village the small main road led off to the right, heading out of town, but Kaliopi led me to the left, away from the shops and through a different part of town—an area that resembled a small nature reserve that boasted a gushing river, several cafés and a cobbled pedestrian walkway that meandered first into a wooded area and then up to a ruined castle. We found a small café with tables outside and in. “Here—sit here in the sunshine. I know that you English people love to get your skin all brown and wrinkly for some reason.” She ordered from the waiter as she moved her chair into the shade of a large tree: tea and a large piece of baklava.

“I have also requested you some milk, as I know you English love to milk in everything,” she said in her mixture of formal and Pidgin English. “And on third thoughts, you don’t look ready for our coffee,” she sniffed, giving me the once over.

“And for you?” I asked, relaxing into my surroundings and choosing to ignore her strange comment about Greek coffee. Maybe it was this odd girl’s sense of humour. I didn’t want to presume to correct her English. I wasn’t there to teach her, and besides, she was a bit scary!

“Me? Oh nothing, I took my breakfast this morning, after I returned from my six a.m. three-kilo run.”
Kilometre, it’s kilometre
—but I didn’t correct her. I must have responded with a look of horror, because Kaliopi added, “I walked most of the way. And now I have the opportunity to show off to a foreigner what little there is to do in this hole from hell, and also to practise in my English. This is perfect for me! Don’t worry, I won’t ask you to be joining me on the runs. I know how unfit you British are—you always eating the fatty things for breakfast. Frying with the vegetable oil bread and eggs and those sausage things…what is wrong with you?”

I didn’t really have the chance to answer as it appeared from our interactions so far that most of Kaliopi’s questions were rhetorical, so I smiled inwardly and allowed myself the luxury of soaking up the atmosphere, content to let her chatter away.
Within the space of forty -eight hours I’m sitting outside a café by the river on a gloriously warm September morning with a very interesting “local”,
I thought, gazing out to the river. I caught sight of a marble woman’s head poking up from the depths and pointed this out to my new friend.

“She’s
Herkyna
. This area we’re in now is called
Krya
. Legend has it that
Herkyna
used to play here with her friend
Persephone
.
Herkyna
was holding a goose and suddenly it flew away into a cave.
Persephone
rushed after it, but the water suddenly rose, trapping
Persephone
inside it and carrying her to the Underworld. The marble head honours this legend.”

The area we were seated in was beautifully lush and green—there was no mistaking the rushing sound of water—and to my right, just in front of the wooded area, an old mill with a waterwheel completed the scene of tranquillity.

I tuned back to Kaliopi’s conversation. “I come from a small town by the coast in the Peloponnese. My father still lives there, but we have a place in Athens also,” she developed a faraway look in her eyes. “My mother died when I was young, leaving him and my two other sisters—I am the middle.”

The subject must’ve been a sensitive one as Kaliopi changed it abruptly. Her distant look cleared and as she shook her head as if to clear it, snapping back to the present and said, “Why don’t you come to my Athens home this weekend, so we can escape this place?”
Seriously, I’ve just met this girl and she’s inviting me to her home? And she’s got two of them?

“You must be incredibly rich.”

“Pah! In Greece, many people keep their family homes in their village for generations and pass them on down the family line. They also have a place in the city where they move to work. Rarely do people take out these mortgage things. I am amazed to learn that in your country, people continue into their fifties to owe banks for their homes…the banks own you, can you not see that?”

I guess I’d never really looked at it like that…I’d always seen taking out a bank loan to buy a house as the norm. Kaliopi’s father lived in the Peloponnese family home whilst she stayed in the Athens apartment, and it appeared they owned these outright.

“I used to work in the city, but I changed jobs. I’m only in this hole from hell village renting a place because the bank I work for has no vacancies in my line of work in Athens at the moment, but they did here.” She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “I need to prove to those
malakas
in Head Office that I am—how you say? Bendy, that’s it—I must work in this place until a vacancy arises back in civilization.” This exchange had been emphasized with a variety of gestures that ended with her ramming her index finger with finality onto the table and sweeping her arm around her.
She really doesn’t like it here…and what does she mean by being ‘bendy?’
I already understood
malakas
, thanks to my introduction with the teens yesterday.

“Ah, Kaliopi, I think you mean you’re being
flexible
,” I stifled a laugh as I decided that now might be a good opportunity to correct her English.

“Yes, bendy, flexible—what is the difference?” Kaliopi shrugged, regarding me with one eye closed against her cigarette smoke.

“Well, bendy refers to a person’s suppleness and…” I smiled, deciding to let the matter drop. I didn’t intend to put my teacher’s hat on right this minute, and besides Kaliopi looked in danger of dropping off to sleep.

We ate in silence for a while. “I need your advice,” Kaliopi suddenly perked up. “After all, you are a foreigner and not from the village, so you are sane and will have a more open mind and not judge me, since you’ve just met me. I had a man spend last Friday night at my flat in Athens. Then on Saturday, my other male friend came to stay. Was it impolite for me not to change the bed sheets after the first man?”

Spluttering on my drink, I wondered if the question was once again a rhetorical one, or if it actually required an answer. The dilemma seemed to resolve itself as Kaliopi continued, “I think in future I must change the sheets when this happens. I cannot have them smelling of different men; it is not the proper way for a young lady to conduct herself.” I glanced at her; she was in a world of her own, quite content to be open and frank with me, despite the fact we’d only known each other for an hour. I was rapidly discovering Kaliopi’s boundaries were vastly different from mine, yet I found this refreshing…
I wonder if this is a Greek thing or a Kaliopi thing?

My second day at school went surprisingly well. Maybe my spirits had been lifted by my chance encounter with Kaliopi that morning. I hadn’t seen Konstantinos or his entourage again, but a new group of kids in their early teens had been decidedly quieter than yesterday’s classes, yet still keen to ask questions.

“You have seen the Big Ben,
Kyria
?” asked one boy.

“We don’t use the definite article in front of ‘Big…’” I started to explain, and then stopped and smiled…plenty of time for teaching verbs, and it was my first day with this particular class.

“Yes, I have. Big Ben is in which city?”

“The London in the England” a young girl proudly stated.
I’m going to have my work cut out for me
, I thought, but at least they weren’t chewing gum and their geography’s good.

“That’s right,” I said, and I gave them homework to write a small paragraph about what they knew about London and the UK.

I also seemed to develop a better rapport with the teachers today; “I live just around the corner from you,” Manos said after a discussion in the staffroom. It turned out he was Greek Australian and had moved back to the motherland to be with his elderly parents. “I’ll give you a lift back in the evening, save you waiting for a bus.” He also introduced me to
spanakopita
—feta cheese and spinach pie.